It’s Hard Out There for a Mom Who Says ‘No’
Here’s how the arguments go: I say how unregulated advertisement aimed directly at kids is contributing to childhood obesity rates among other societal ills. You remind me I’m the parent, I have the right to tell my kid “no,” grow up, be the adult, how about a little personal responsibilty?
Here’s the deal: I do say “no,” all the time. Almost every time, truly. I’ve had a strict “no characters — ever” policy, just so there were no gray areas. I even pass over the bargain clothes if they are emblazoned with Hannah Montana or Raven or Bratz or whatever. My seven-year-old knows this and mostly doesn’t bother asking anymore.
Those times where there is a request for Sponge Bob this or Princess Whoever that, I set out the invisible lectern and launch into my diatribe on how this particular cereal is displayed just where they’ll see it and the reason Johnny Depp is on a candy wrapper is so they’ll want me to buy it. If the response is a whine, I go ahead and point out that Company X wants them to whine so I’ll give up and I usually finish with “Your whining has strengthened my resolve! The answer now is especially ‘no’!”
But damn. My resolve is growing weak. I’m really tired of it all. And I’m not convinced that all the no’s now will result in them making better choices later. The thing is, personal responsibility/no regulation folks, parents are up against a lot. I’m pretty sure we’re not winning either.
The Federal Trade Commission recognizes this too. They commissioned a study and found that the food industry spends $1.6 billion on all kinds of marketing to kids — not just TV commericals, but those maddening grocery store displays and online brand interaction games and contests, school donations and more.
Here’s some of what the study found (from AP via Salon):
The commission studied spending directed at children ages 2-17.
Spending on soda marketing came to $492 million, with the vast majority
of that spending directed toward adolescents. Fast food restaurants
reported spending close to $294 million, which was divided about evenly
between children and adolescents. For cereals, companies spent about
$237 million, with the vast majority of that targeted to children under
age 12.
Also, the Internet ads are completely unregulated and may differ from what is on TV and if you don’t know exactly what you’re kid is seeing online, well, then, the marketers have won. They always win.
Kathryn Montgomery, a communications professor at American University, said “Parents who are concerned abut their children’s eating habits have to
understand that you can’t just look at what’s happening on television.
That’s not the way it is anymore. It’s a pervasive marketing
environment.”
Anyway, the FTC made some recommendations based on the report, including calling on marketers to use their money and ingenuity on promoting healthful foods and excercise in the same way they promote the other crap.
Personally, and here’s where the initial argument begins again, I’d like to see tighter regulation of advertisements directed at children and strict limits on it as well. Un-American, I know. But my personal responsibility only gets me (and my kids) so far. You too, you know, you too.
How are you teaching your little ones to be media savvy? How do you keep from giving up?
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Madeline, I take offence at your “popular fake singer” comment. Ms. Montana is a gifted performer, and I would be proud to let my daughter wear the hanna shirt, eat the screen-printed hanna cookie, with the hanna lunch box and the hanna juice boxes and the hanna hair clip, carrying the hanna notebook and pencil set in her hanna book-bag. Unfortunately, my baby is only 9 months old. I can only hope there is a Hanna for her someday.
(really! I saw a hanna cookie! Yuk!)
We stayed away from marketing things until my son was about 3. Until then we didn’t have cable, so he wasn’t really exposed to anyone other than the news man.
Then we stayed with my in-laws for a few months during a cross country relocation.
Let’s just say he is now very familiar with Charlie and Lola.
We had still managed to stear clear of him actually owning anything with a character on it until it was time to buy some jammies for an overnight hospital stay. He saw the cars jammies and was in love. How could we say no to a kid who was about to have surgery. We realized then that there are more important things than avoiding marketing. Sometimes a familiar character helps take away some of the scary feelings that accompany going to the hospital.
We still don’t *encourage* character toys, but if he wants to play with Lighting McQueen along side the big yellow tonka, well that’s ok with us.
We do more of the balance thing. I won’t buy food that we otherwise wouldn’t buy because it’s themed, or crappy toys, but if my son would rather have Spongebob underwear than plain white that’s OK with me, the kid needs underwear anyway. Last year when he needed a lunch box for kindergarten and wanted a Cars box, we let him get it – and when it fell apart six months later and we had to replace it we talked about the fact that sometimes themed items aren’t as good, and he was fine with replacing it with a plain sturdy one. It made a pretty persuasive lesson.
He rarely sees commercials because when he watches TV it’s almost always on DVR, but when we do we talk a lot about the fact that commercials make things look much better than they are, and he rarely begs for things he sees on TV. He’s got one TV show t-shirt, but then his father and I each have a t-shirt or two that are related to entertainments we love (are Avatar t-shirts worse than concert t-shirts or sports t-shirts?) and as long as we’re not all collectively wall-to-wall marketing I’m comfortable with that.
I see your point, and, like I said, you should raise your kids the way you want to. I still am not convinced that one has to completely cut out stuff to teach a lesson…
If you’re asking me, Sheri, my kids are 7 and 3, and gracious, NO!, I’m not monitoring their food at friends’ homes. Or school for that matter. In fact, we don’t demonize food around here or call it “bad” — no, no, not going down that path — we have our treats but it rarely features a movie star or a cartoon character on the package (on the one hand because I’m cheap and buy off-brand, on the other hand because I hate how so much packaged food is covered with TV shows and movie stuff.)
As for the character thing, it’s a firm no because, like I said, that keeps us out of gray areas (i.e. clothes covered with Sesame Street characters are OK because they’re “educational,” but SpongeBob backpacks aren’t because he’s a dingbat. That’s too fine-grained for the toddler set.) Plus, in saying no to these things, I get to talk about the overall marketing machine when we see them, which is really what I wanted to get at in this post — the powerful and successful marketing machine. So, sure, I might be setting them up for tossing cross-promoted candy wrappers in the sewer, but maybe they’ll recognize that it’s the chocolate not a popular fake singer’s picture that’s making them feel all good inside.
You know, we even talk about why the car dealership has a billion balloons floating around the lot, when and why a new mess of clothes appears throughout the year in stores, why a box of books showed up on the doorstep (ordered online) — I go all the way with this stuff. Because recognizing the pervasiveness and power of marketing is the only way I can think of for any of this to pay off in the long run. Incidentally, my older one recognizes the signs and more than once has asked me, “Mom, are you impulse shopping now?” Whoops! Careful what you wish for!
And Jennifer! It’s never too late, in my humble and optimistic opinion, to get back on that horse. My advice? Cut Dora cold turkey and then talk alllllll about why, over and over again. It’s OK to use big words and she doesn’t have to totally get it, she just has to know it’s important to you for a real reason. But I’m no expert. I’m kind of flailing here myself.
Just wondering how old your kids are????
Are they school age??? do they have friends???
Now, I’m not saying to give up all your values and just let them do as they want, but I’m saying, you are gonna need to pick your fights. Really.
Do you actually go to their friends houses and make sure they NEVER eat sugar, or do you meet their friend’s parents and even though they might partake in a sugary cereal for breakfast, you know that they are good people, and that’s THE.MOST.IMPORTANT.THING.
I agree with Kaz, you all are setting yourselves up. An occasional treat isn’t gonna kill your child. Good parents do let their kids have SpongeBob shirts and eat fruit snacks every now and then.
If you fight with your child over every little thing, you aren’t gonna get through to them when the stuff really starts to count.
And you can get a cheap Cinderella dress from e-bay…staying home and taking care of your kids while your partner goes out and earns money isn’t bad either. I am pulling my own weight believe me.
I’ve got to agree with some here – I think there is a balance. Completely restricting your child will only work so long. My wife grew up with no junk food, and her mother handing out raisins and toothbrushes at Halloween. She and her sister would walk to the store, buy candy, and throw the wrappers in the sewer.
I prefer to teach my daughter that she cannot have every little thing she wants, but if she wants a princess doll, that’s fine. She is also surrounded by strong women (mostly on my wife’s side) who are teaching her that women don’t have to be princesses and just look forward to marrying a prince who will take care of them.
I honestly believe that you can strike a balance, and have good, well-rounded, intelligent kids. I don’t let television raise my kid.
I just hope I am right!
That’s not to say you don’t have the right to raise your kids as you see fit. If you want to say no to all character stuff, it is your right to decide to do so.
Just don’t be surprised if you see Johnny Depp candy wrappers in the sewers!
If I had only had my daughter, I’d be as smug as Baconsmom. But I had to go and have a 2nd kid. I feel pretty confident that with the particular personality of my daughter, I could have held the hard & fast line of absolutely no Personalities, etc. My son is a lot more interested & plugged into popular culture. Even if they don’t see it on TV, or get to wear the cloths or play with the toys – other kids have Hannah Montana/Pokemon/Princess/Power Ranger lunchboxes, trading cards, t-shirts and toys. Unless you are going to cloister your kids away from the world (not saying its a bad option!), you are going to have unfortunate influences. We have steered a lot more toward cosumer education & mindful consumption as they get older, rather than trying to control their exposure.
As with everything else, I think it’s all about moderation. I was trying to avoid the princess thing, but I was weak once at Target when my 4-year-old had been having a tough day, and I let her get a Sleeping Beauty doll. And watching her play with it, I’ve realized that she doesn’t care one bit about the actual Sleeping Beauty story–she just loves to play with the hair, admire the glittery dress, and have SB interact with her other toys (I think she’s tight with Lilly the Leapfrog and the pink kitty these days). So basically, the princess doll is no different to her than any other “non-character” doll.
But I do know parents who have gone completely over the top with that stuff, and it’s easy to see how it can happen. You just have to balance the character things with the non-character things, and most importantly: DO NOT TELL THE GRANDPARENTS if the child likes a particular character! (I made that mistake and my kid’s 3rd birthday was a Dora-palooza.)
I wish I had done as well as baconsmom…I intended to. But sometimes the person I have to remember to say “no” to is myself. My 2 year old watches Dora, she loves her! We let her watch one episode a day while we make dinner. She knows the word “episode.” At TJ Maxx she saw some sneakers with Dora on them. She was so excited. I bought them. At the grocery store she saw a can of soup with Dora on it. I thought…if this will make my very picky eater eat one more thing, ok. I bought it. She loves it (but she picks the carrots out!).
Here’s my question…how do I lift myself back up from this slippery slope? Is it too late?
No, it’s hard. Especially when everything is so pervasive and when their little friends get to have it – plus it’s all so colorful! It’s hard to resist.
This is the solution if you’re sick of saying no. Offer an alternative. Say, “Okay, you go to the playground with so and so, or you can get the Hannah Montana shirt.” Or some other such option. I did this to my 7 year-old daughter on a trip to Disneyland. She desperately wanted a Cinderella dress costing $100. I said, “You have a choice. We continue staying in our nice hotel and go to Disneyland tomorrow. Or, we stay in a less-nice hotel and skip Disneyland tomorrow – and you get the dress.” She didn’t get the dress and we had a great second day in Disneyland. Now when she asks for things, I can see her little wheels turning, deciding if she’d rather have a trip to her favorite restaurant (where she can make her own ice-cream sundae).
baconsmom, your link doesn’t work. And you must live somewhere where every other child you see isn’t fat. I on the other hand have seen my fair share of fat kids at my local mall, sitting in the food court with a huge tray of fast food in front of them. I’ve got news: it is a problem.
To the author, I’ve just had my first son, he is 8 weeks old. My husband and I piously intend to raise him as you describe–to not fall for the hype. It was good for me to read that it’s difficult, I hope I can keep up my resolve as you have.
First of all, I’m not worried about The! Childhood! Obesity! Crisis! Booga Booga!, but that’s because I don’t believe it exists. (See Sandy Swarcz’s Junkfood Science [http://junkfoodscience.com])
But I was concerned about gender roles and sexism and the denigration of the functional family so often found in commercial television. So we limit the viewing – PBS Kids and Food Network. That’s it. That’s her choices.
As a result, she’s never seen a princess, doesn’t know who Hannah Montanna is, and couldn’t care less. She also eats every vegetable put in front of her and will try new foods eagerly – usually because someone’s prepared them with delicious care on a cooking show.
I am one of those “personal responsibility/no regulation” people. I’m also a parent. I am not weary; I do not feel I’m “up against a lot”; and I have no concerns over her health or her media savvy. I don’t think this is really as hard as people make it.